The book and its cover is fairly self explanatory that its about 9 women that were white and their activities in the freedom movement. What is interesting as I read through these different stories that these women didn’t necessarily have to do what they did. But they did it anyway because of their experiences and their decisions to give up a portion of their life for a cause.
Constance Curry talks about her experiences as a child but she really started getting more involved with movements when she got to college. She was involved with NSA (National Student Associaion) and she was fascninated with the certain debates. She talks about the berak donw of the NSA such as regional group. She talks about a meeting she conducted in the south where it was illegal for blacks and whites to eat together and they had to split up during the meeting for lunch and she felt it impacted her in a way that the act of separating over lunch took away a personal freedom.
She later talked about her work with the movement for equal opportunity for public education. She was to work with other white women in Mississippi to help make a move against segregation of races in the state. She called the organization Mississippians for public education. Her boss was an African American leader who was relentless for education.
Another woman was Joan browning and she came from Albany Georgia. Like other women in the book they were raised in mostly white backgrounds. She felt that she participated in the movements due to her conviction as a Christian. This is the first I noticed in the book that someone participated out of religions more specifically Christian values. She felt also that she was trying to progress her culture toward more tolerance and acceptance of others. She felt that her actions through the freedom movements were not an act of rebellion.
She noticed that her actions came at a cost. It cost her status in white society, along with being alienated from her church. Through her experiences she found that other people that participated in the movement also lost some things themselves. She notes that she still continues on as an advocate for the movement and not afraid to share her knowledge. In a way she has not shown regret from her actions due to her writings.
The next story is of Dorothy Dawson Burlage she lived in a middle upper class neighborhood and she was located in the south. Her family although conformed to jim crow laws she noticed that her family was against the KKK and any violence toward African Americans in their area. In the Univeristy of Texas she became involved with the movement. She started off with chairing a great issues committee. Her journey in advocacy for and membership in the southern freedom movement began at college.
Casey grew up in Texas with her mom and her grandparents. She refers to her life as being raised both her mom and her grandparents. She talks about her consistent her life was in Texas that her grandmother would keep things as it always has been in her house such as doing laundry in a large pot, and her mom would take her to the library where she can read all the books. She talked about her Sunday church it remained consistent and she would sing the same songs and give the same offering and donation. She later revels that while it was a town of only about 10000 people it consisted of more millionaires per capita. She has essentially come from a very wealthy family. (As you can immediately tell she has significant drive to be involved with the freedom movement)
She was more involved with the freedom movement through her education. She was influenced by the Y’s president who was black and attended a sit in during the 1960s (she was in her graduate program by this time) and she was so moved by the presidents’ speech and testimony about what happened to her. She was taken to jail after having the sit in (at the movie theaters which are segregated) broken up by tear gas.
She goes on about more opportunities from different conferences. One conference was about the new idea of the Peace Corps and it was to raise food for sharecroppers evicted for registering to vote in western Tennessee. She noted that she and others like herself could rally to an area so fast that they had to live life on the fast line by car trips and red eye flights. She was so involved with different movements she dropped out ofher grad school program to take a position as program director at the University of Illinois YWCA.
women in this book all came from an educated background, and made their own decisions to join the movement.
Whether they were influenced by family or experiences. They were willing to put themselves on the line for a movement that not only changed America, but also progressed society as a whole.
The
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